It's paranormal this did so well at the box officeMalcolm and Kisha move into their dream home, but soon learn a demon also resides there. When Kisha becomes possessed, Malcolm - determined to keep his sex life on track - turns to a priest, a psychic, and a team of ghost-busters for help.
Parody films used to be clever. The Naked Gun and Airplane! were wonderful examples of how parody films could be done right, mocking film genres or stereotypes. Sadly, it has since devolved into outright spoofing specific films, and looks unlikely to stop, or get better.
It says something about Marlon Wayans that his script seems to make many of the characters fancy him, but its not a surprise that the attempts at humor include fart jokes and parodies of popular films, including Paranormal Activity and The Devil Inside.
Marlon Wayans does a good job in making you forget he actually did well in Requiem For A Dream, giving a performance that's nothing short of annoying, with the low point being an overlong sequence where he has sex with a stuffed dog. Nick Swardson proves to be ever reliable for being terrible, while everybody else's pantomime performances aren't worth noting, nor remembering, just like their unlikable characters.
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| My reaction to news there's a sequel coming. |
The film truly shows its ugly side all throughout, beginning by a dog getting run over, and continuing throughout, with the attempts at jokes indulging in casual racism, misogyny and homophobia jokes, all for the sake of cheap laughs. The ugliest side of these jokes is how Malcolm gets raped and its treated as a horrific event, but when Keisha gets raped, its okay because she enjoyed it.
A Haunted House is a bad parody film turned ugly, thanks to its bad taste in jokes that are embarrassing more than they are funny. If you want to see how a spoof film done right looks like, then you should look no further than Black Dynamite, a spoof of the Blaxploitation genre that has more smart writing in one scene than A Haunted House has in its entire runtime.
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